IE8 does not pass Acid 3! It doesn’t support SVG for starters. Secondly, this claim was made by Apple on their features page. I’m with them, in that Safari 4 is a browser for public use, offered by default on the website. Opera 10 is not, you have to specifically go to opera.com/next to get it. Opera may have rendered Acid 3 first in the labs, but it needs to be in people’s laps, and Safari has done that better.

So Safari wins the award of making it's beta software easier for n00bs to download - big deal.
Fact is Opera is still publicly downloadable, despite whatever semantics Apple's BS crew spew out on their web site.